The case of the frozen CD drives.

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plakaplaka
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The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Very stumped noob here. Mint 20 on a 64 bit laptop with an internal CD drive. mate with wine and a windiows ripper app. Two new external CD drives, big Plextors, SATA wioth a uSB interface and their own power. The two USB cables go to a powered hub then on to the laaptops single USB 3 port.

But the external drives are frozen. The ripper software cannot open the trays or spin up a disk. All works fine on the laptops internal drive. Drive tray button does nothing. I ran three comand lines to make sure thgey are not locked an got a return message that they are not locked. Look in the MNT directory and all three show up. Lookj in the etc/whatchamacallit file and all are listed. All set to start on boot with the mint disks utility.

Run the ripper software and all three drives show up with proper (windows)drive letters. But only the internal one is functional.

Googled around. Extremely frustrating. Ratio of off topic chatter from the regs to actual help is annoying. Only clue I got was a guy who changed sata ports to solve a problem with data not getting through.

I have no idea what to try next. Set up some sort of virtual machine running some sort of windows so that can run the drives?

Any help greatly appreciated.
Last edited by LockBot on Thu Feb 09, 2023 11:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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plakaplaka
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Slight addition to all that: When I go into the CD ripper software and use it to try to open a drive the light on the drive blinks but the drive does not open. Same thing when I push the button on the front of the drive.

Tried plugging the hub into a USB 2 piort on the laptop, no joy.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Booted to Fossipup running live on a stick. Same everything.
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antikythera
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by antikythera »

Have you tested one of them without the usb hub? Obviously you are limited for ports or wouldn't be using that but it may be causing the issue.
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plakaplaka
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Yes. I had a bad hub for awhile. I tested that one early. Linux seems to recognize the drive but the commands are wrong? What is the bulletproof command for opening a mounted CD drive?
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Another clue:

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bi ... rol.1.html


So Plextor drives have issues on linux? I could find nothing on the Plextor site about CDs, they are all about solid state memory anymore. Who knows who made these thing. I have one of the old (IDE) ones. They were the best back in the day. Reason I bought two new onws. still they are fast.

I really appreciate the people that have considered my problem and tried to help. But I have been working both ends against the middle and Linux is loosing to Windows real fast. I no longer play these games. I wanna get work done and Linux really isn't the best tool for that. I Even upgraded my Mint to the latest and it still has the same glaring bug) It has it's place but for a machine dedicated to a single program I can configure a Windows box to be what I need in an hour. I've wasted days on this.

Thanks again folks, I'm out.

PP
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antikythera
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by antikythera »

Not sure if it's Plextor as a brand or the specific model or enclosure it came in. I have an LG SuperMulti BLADE model no. GP70NS50 and that works fine with linux even if there's an internal SATA drive present too. It's USB host powered laptop style with slot in mechanism instead of a flimsy tray. I find LG drives are always well supported across all operating systems and last well too. I have had poor experiences with Samsung optical drives though, the motors in them are too fragile.
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plakaplaka
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Thank you. But $100 for a pair of new drivws is mre than I got (just bought soft ware and all). Also my disks have no dust, scratches or so much as a fingerprint. I handle them minimally and don't use jewel cases. Not the best for a slide in drive although those would be my second choice to a full size tray machine.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by antikythera »

I agree entirely that buying new drives would be cost prohibitive. The reason I got the portable one was primarily for my laptop without an optical drive but it's also handy for my ryzen tower which does not have a 5.25" bay. I have tried it with my AM1 tower which has a sata 5.25" LG SuperMulti M@Disc.

I only mentioned it as confirmation it may be the specific drives you bought are not fully compatible. As windows ripper app means virtually nothing as there are several, could you try asunder if you have not already done so?

http://littlesvr.ca/asunder/

sudo apt install asunder
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

The drives are not seen undert Mint, or under Puppy, or under Bodhi. Yeah, it's the drives, But I have them, I have drive cagees out of old machines so I can have them at a good height with a smallk tower on the desk. (and as long as I am running tyhem on USB anyway.0 have a huge time investment in DbPa. I can playt a whole lot of game with software in the windows world whereas I wouldn't even know the proper tools or the programming structures (and i'm no programmer exactly) in linux. (and the documentation is flakey)

Linux is not recognizing my Toshiba external drives. Not good. But the thing is fine for what I want it for, day to day cruising the net.

My new windows box will be here today. I'll pull it's teeth, add some godies (like that right click menu item that give me instyant full priveledge on any file or folder), Bundle up the modified OS as an ISO for safekeeping then install my working software, including a sweet firewall.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by ThaCrip »

plakaplaka wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:40 am What is the bulletproof command for opening a mounted CD drive?
Just playing with my standard desktop SATA burners, I did...

Code: Select all

lsblk
if you got more than one drive it will probably show as 'sr0' or 'sr1' as I got two and that's what they are listed as. then I do...

Code: Select all

eject /sr0
and with the "/sr1" and both ejected without issue.

Code: Select all

eject -t /sr0
that closes the drive (at least a desktop PC drive).

but in regards to your general issue it makes me wonder if you could somehow remove those standard desktop burners from the USB3 enclosure and connected it to another enclosure you know works and see if the drives come alive or not.

p.s. I got a Vantec IDE/SATA to USB3 based device and I can connect my IDE/SATA burners to them and I don't think I had any issues. but off the top of my head I mainly tried it on a old IDE CD-RW drive but it works fine on there as ImgBurn see's it etc. so if you got any way to try those drives that don't work on another enclosure etc, it might be worth looking into if you got some time. even in regards to Wine itself, I noticed sometimes older versions of Wine (say v4 series) are better in terms of ASPI mode detecting your CD/DVD burners where as newer versions I had to use SPTI for a program like ImgBurn to see it.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Appreciate the ideas. The two plextor CD drives are not in enclosures. I velcro'd them to the top of a low profile HP case and plugged them into the machine via a powered USB to SATA bridge. I just wanteed more power to the drives. Worked a treat. Then the USB ports began failing one after another. Took awhile to figure out. M$ had wour solutions, 2 easy, 1 pretty technical (a registry hack) and the last to simply get a new PC. I got to the last one and traded the HP in on A Dell. Same specs, midsized tower, bays for two full sizeed CD drives and that most prized item, a PCI slot. The PCI slot fits a special audio mastering card I want to use for recording some tapes. Already tested the driver win Win10 and it has at least basic functionality. The CD drives on the USB to SATA bridge do not work at all. Tested some others and nada. Googled around and a lot of people have problems with them, The ones I have are considered some of the better one and a solution that came up often was keep trying different ones untill something that works is found. No thanks.

But I don't know if the issue is hardware or software. I'm dead using the bridges under Win10 so nothing to lose I suppose. I have abandoned Mint, just too buggy and am Running Bodhi at the moment (installed). It's a skinny skin on Ubuntu. Seems to behave well enough. Not a well made skin tho'. I have a lot of live sticks of different Distros and I've already proven my ripping software runs under the latest wine so I could try something with an early version (where to find?) and seee if it hellps.

Thanks!
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by John_B »

plakaplaka wrote: Tue Aug 09, 2022 9:16 pm Very stumped noob here. Mint 20 on a 64 bit laptop with an internal CD drive. mate with wine and a windiows ripper app. Two new external CD drives, big Plextors, SATA wioth a uSB interface and their own power. The two USB cables go to a powered hub then on to the laaptops single USB 3 port.

But the external drives are frozen. The ripper software cannot open the trays or spin up a disk. All works fine on the laptops internal drive. Drive tray button does nothing. I ran three comand lines to make sure thgey are not locked an got a return message that they are not locked. Look in the MNT directory and all three show up. Lookj in the etc/whatchamacallit file and all are listed. All set to start on boot with the mint disks utility.

Run the ripper software and all three drives show up with proper (windows)drive letters. But only the internal one is functional.

Googled around. Extremely frustrating. Ratio of off topic chatter from the regs to actual help is annoying. Only clue I got was a guy who changed sata ports to solve a problem with data not getting through.

I have no idea what to try next. Set up some sort of virtual machine running some sort of windows so that can run the drives?

Any help greatly appreciated.
Do the external CD drives work when plugged directly into your laptop's USB 3 port?

Make and model numbers of the errant external CD drives, please. lspci As well, Windows 7's introduction led to needed firmware updates for the LG DVD burners I once owned. Thus, there may be firmware updates for something as old as dedicated CD drives.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by ThaCrip »

plakaplaka wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:58 pm I've already proven my ripping software runs under the latest wine so I could try something with an early version (where to find?) and seee if it hellps.
Install PlayOnLinux (sudo apt install playonlinux) as you can install older versions of Wine though there on the 'Tools > Manage Wine versions' section. you can even try x86(32bit) and amd64(64bit).

p.s. I use PlayOnLinux for the limited amount of Windows software I use and the system installed Wine (v7.15 'development' currently) for general games with Lutris etc.
plakaplaka wrote: Thu Aug 18, 2022 12:58 pm The two plextor CD drives are not in enclosures. I velcro'd them to the top of a low profile HP case and plugged them into the machine via a powered USB to SATA bridge.
Any chance you can use them like normal SATA drives on a desktop? ; that would probably be easier and I would assume would work.
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Re: The case of the frozen CD drives.

Post by plakaplaka »

Yes that is what I am doing for the moment. Tyhe bridges only work with certain MoBos and I don't got theem. I do want the drives on thair own power but I will solve that some other way.
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